Andrew Mitchell: As the Minister said, Sunday was the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. The hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and I represented this House, along with the Minister for Africa, at ceremonies in Kigali, which were dignified and profoundly moving.
The House will recall that nearly a million Rwandans were murdered in frenzied killing over a 90-day period while the international community effectively did nothing to stop it. Once the killing was ended, those leaders who were responsible for the genocide fled. Over the intervening years, many have returned voluntarily to Rwanda to be processed through the Gacaca court system. Others have been extradited to Rwanda from the United States, Canada, France, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden. Britain, sadly, is a glaring exception.
Proceedings started here in the UK more than a decade ago in respect of five alleged genocide perpetrators, but in spite of ruling that there was a prima facie case of genocide made out against all five, the British courts declined to extradite. The British taxpayer has already forked out more than £3 million in legal costs, and four of the five are living on benefits, including housing benefit. The Rwandan authorities, having failed to secure extradition in Britain in the lower courts, have declined to proceed to the Supreme Court and have asked that the UK undertake the trial here. In spite of all the evidence already being available here in the United Kingdom, the Metropolitan police have indicated that it could take a further 10 years to process these cases.
The souls of those who were murdered in the genocide cry out for justice, but from Britain justice has at least been delayed and at worst denied. The Nuremberg  trials commenced a mere seven months after the end of the war and were concluded within 10 months. In the  interests of those facing these dreadful allegations, as well as of the reputation of British justice, we should surely expect these five alleged génocidaires to be on trial at the Old Bailey by the end of this year. I end with the words spoken last weekend by the distinguished Rwandan Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Mr Johnston Busingye, who, when he came here to Britain, our Director of Public Prosecutions could not even find the time to see. He said this:
“Anyone who cares about British values and justice should be ashamed.”
The UK will go down in history as the only country in Europe that knowingly shielded alleged Rwandan génocidaires from justice.

Ruth George: I really need to make progress—I am sorry.
At the same time, more parents are working longer hours and spending more time travelling to work. We have the longest commuting times in Europe. Those parents have less time to spend with their children. There are more demands for flexibility from employers, especially at weekends, in the evenings and in school holidays—the times that parents most need to spend with their children.
There are new demands from the state for parents to be in full-time work, whether to access free childcare places from age three or through the demands of universal credit from age 12. At the same time as parents are working harder and longer, there is an increase in child and family poverty. Increasing numbers of parents face money worries and debt and have to visit food banks—strains that their children all too often see.
Alongside all those pressures on families and our young people, the number of professionals who are there to support them is reducing. Class sizes in schools are increasing and there are fewer teaching assistants, so school staff have less time for each child and growing pressures to prove academic achievement. Our schools do a fantastic job and I pay tribute to the staff who go above and beyond to support the young people in their care, but they cannot help with the sustained, one-to-one counselling and professional support that is so often needed. On top of that, child and adolescent mental health services have huge waiting lists and are still underfunded.
Our clinical commissioning groups spend 14% of their budget on mental health, but just 0.9% on children’s mental health. Even when the Government put additional funding into CCGs, it was not ring-fenced and, too often, not spent. Although an extra £250 million a year was allocated to CAMHS, in the first year only 36% of CCGs increased their spending by as much as that allocation. In the following year, 2016-17, only half of them did so, and last year, 2017-18, the spending stayed roughly the same. In 2018-19, it increased by just £50 million. Only a small fraction of the £1.25 billion that the Government had invested in children’s mental health services and CAMHS actually reached the front line.
CCGs are under huge pressures. Derbyshire’s CCGs have had to cut their spending by £5 million this year, and, despite the promised extra £20 billion for the NHS, they face further spending cuts of £270 million over the next four years. Mental health services are on the target list. The number of psychiatrists working in CAMHS at all levels fell by 3.7% between 2011 and 2018, although the number of referrals has almost doubled, as has the number of children admitted to A&E with mental health problems. At the same time, councils are cutting their spending.
School nurses spend a great deal of time supporting families and young people on the CAMHS waiting list who are going through the agonising wait of 12 to 18 months while experiencing suicidal thoughts, but they too are being subjected to cuts because of cuts in public health spending. We are losing half our school nurses in Derbyshire. As for “early help” support for families, 200 staff are being made redundant, and there is nowhere for families to turn for support. At all levels, support services are being underfunded. The Government have made a commitment to providing more counsellors in schools, which is often the right place for them, as children may need access to support. However, the target of extra provision in just a quarter of schools in five years’ time is not good enough. Our children are being failed, and their families are being failed.
Investment in mental health support for young people would actually save the Government money—not just in the health service, which would be able to nip mental health problems in the bud, but in the education, social services and criminal justice sectors. Our young people are crying out for help. The Government have some laudable aims in the 10-year plan, but they have not enough concrete plans to implement those aims, to fund CCGs to deliver them, or to invest in the training of the staff who will be on the front line.
The huge number of people who have contacted Parliament, and me personally, about this debate shows how much concern exists out there about the terrible cases of young people who are driven past the point of despair and the families whose lives are turned upside down. This is a cry for help on behalf of all of them. I ask the Minister please to listen, and to tell us how the Government will act.